Fixes #35397 - Preseed Autoinstall incorporate host_params

[bastian-src]

Several host params exist to make the host creation more configurable ('keyboard' to set the layout, 'lang' to set the locale). The Ubuntu Autoinstall cloud-init template does not take any of these parameters into account.
This PR incorporates the following:

• Param 'ubuntu_mirror_uri' to set default mirror during upgrade
• Param 'keyboard' to set default layout
• Param 'lang' to set default locale

[theforeman-bot]

Issues: #35397

[bastian-src]

Integration test looks unrelated IMHO.

[bastian-src]

@sbernhard do you have feedback maybe?
I rebased to current develop and tests are fine - the changes aren't severe at all.

[bastian-src]

Hey @MariaAga! Maybe you are busy at the moment - just wanted to ask to assign someone to this PR please :) evgeni reviewed PRs regarding Ubuntu Autoinstall before.

[bastian-src]

Thanks for your review @evgeni!

[bastian-src]

@evgeni are there any more questions regarding the architecture? I just rebased to the latest master.

[evgeni]

@evgeni are there any more questions regarding the architecture? I just rebased to the latest master.

I'm still trying to wrap my head why you set disable_suites and disable_components

[bastian-src]

It relates to this post about disabling the automatic update: Stackoverflow

It's the configuration which worked with the official Ubuntu image as an installation media.

[evgeni]

Okay, and then the user ends up with a system that has the updates/security repos disabled, and you need a config management tool to re-enable them?
Why do you want to disable the auto-updates in the first place? If we're providing a local mirror, all is cool?

[evgeni]

And maybe more to the "why": https://projects.theforeman.org/issues/35397 speaks about missing parameters, like keyboard, cool, but I can't find a ubuntu_mirror_uri parameter anywhere.

Not saying this change as such is wrong, I just don't understand the motivation behind it (the mirror part)

[bastian-src]

Okay, and then the user ends up with a system that has the updates/security repos disabled, and you need a config management tool to re-enable them?
Why do you want to disable the auto-updates in the first place? If we're providing a local mirror, all is cool?

The motivation behind this is actually related to a katello-based environment. When deploying a host with subscription-manager, updates are handled by the finish script. If we do the auto-updates during installation and again when subscription-manager runs, packages which are outdated in the auto-updates repo are updated twice. This takes usually more time.
Still, it can be discussed whether this should become default for non-katello environments as well.

And maybe more to the "why": https://projects.theforeman.org/issues/35397 speaks about missing parameters, like keyboard, cool, but I can't find a ubuntu_mirror_uri parameter anywhere.

In general, it is useful to have this variable especially in case of a smart proxy setup. Depending on the configuration, the local repo might be on the foreman itself, but in other cases the smart proxy could contain a copy of that repo. I thought that a host parameter would solve this issue quite elegantly, since we can now define the parameter per host group.
However, this is a different feature that is not mentioned in the issue - should I create another one for this change?

Thanks for your feedback on this! Highly appreciated 🙌

[evgeni]

Okay, and then the user ends up with a system that has the updates/security repos disabled, and you need a config management tool to re-enable them?
Why do you want to disable the auto-updates in the first place? If we're providing a local mirror, all is cool?

The motivation behind this is actually related to a katello-based environment. When deploying a host with subscription-manager, updates are handled by the finish script. If we do the auto-updates during installation and again when subscription-manager runs, packages which are outdated in the auto-updates repo are updated twice. This takes usually more time. Still, it can be discussed whether this should become default for non-katello environments as well.

Langsam wird ein Schuh draus ;-)

So the real problem is that the auto-updates repo and the later configured repo are different repos, and thus can be out of sync and we end up doing certain operations twice, prolonging the update. That's certainly something we should improve!

And maybe more to the "why": https://projects.theforeman.org/issues/35397 speaks about missing parameters, like keyboard, cool, but I can't find a ubuntu_mirror_uri parameter anywhere.

In general, it is useful to have this variable especially in case of a smart proxy setup. Depending on the configuration, the local repo might be on the foreman itself, but in other cases the smart proxy could contain a copy of that repo. I thought that a host parameter would solve this issue quite elegantly, since we can now define the parameter per host group. However, this is a different feature that is not mentioned in the issue - should I create another one for this change?

A "normal" smart proxy will never have repos, it has no such capability. A Katello one will, but then I would actually expect Katello to be able to tell us the repo url with the right proxy used, so we don't have to guess and/or set it manually as a parameter?

And yes, I think we should split this one into one PR for keyboard/locale, that gets an instant ack and can be merged, and then we can discuss the details of the repo part.